The deadline for submissions is Friday 30th November, so if you haven’t already, please do share your feelings of gratitude for the life of Urgyen Sangharakshita. To remind you, here are the criteria and means of submission:

Because the book will be professionally bound we ask you to follow these following simple instructions. The page will need to be:

Responses

Ashvajit — Wed, 28 Nov, 2018 - 10:32

A contribution to the Book of Gratitude - Ashvajit

Imagine, if you will, a young man, tolerably well-educated, ambitious, energetic but increasingly frustrated at finding himself in a strange, perplexing and sometimes hostile and dangerous world. He lacks the ability to pay skilful and sustained attention to what surrounds him and to what lies within. He sees only a swirl of fleeting and conflicting impressions and ideas. His emotions are a disturbing flux, sometimes manifesting as craving, sometimes as noble aspiration, sometimes as hatred, sometimes simply as confusion; he has given up trying to make friends with people, they are so inconstant, unreliable and reactive. Put rather starkly and dramatically, such, far too often, were my own mental-cum-emotional states, even though I managed to conceal them quite successfully from others and even from myself for much of the time, before I met Bhante Sangharakshita.

From the time I first heard Bhante speak, conducting a question and answer session in the basement of Sakura, Monmouth Street, not far from Trafalgar Square in London in October 1970, to his death at 10:00am in Hereford Hospital on 30 October 2018, almost exactly 48 years passed. They were years in which I came to know one of the most remarkable men it has been my privilege to meet; the one who was to have by far the most profound, far-reaching and life-changing influence on my character and conduct. Such was his dramatic and psychic impact on me that for the first year or so after meeting him, I thought that we were in telepathic communication. Whether that was so or not, he soon taught me to recognise what was truly my own mind: he taught me by personal example how to meditate and how to reflect. A year and a half after we met he ordained me, gave me my name and introduced me to the mandala of Avalokiteshvara, the archetypal bodhisattva of compassion, thus making me one of his personal preceptees and acknowledging me as a disciple of the Buddha. He taught me how to live with mindfulness, kindness and wisdom, though often at first I ignored his teachings. He taught me how my inner turmoil arose, and how it might come to an end. And I began to pass on, to whatever extent I was able, the gift of the Dharma to others. He gave my life meaning and purpose, and though at times I found him uncomfortably, even painfully strict, he gradually became a very special friend, showing me unparalleled kindness and patience. I am glad that he was strict. Had it not been so, I would not have learned, not have realised what had to be overcome, what abandoned, what developed and what attained.

Urgyen Sangharakshita’s passing has been yet another life-changing event for me. He leaves me with a paradox: on the one hand, a void, an emptiness, an absence, yet on the other, an overwhelming sense of gratitude and joy. Early on, he introduced me to his mother, his sister Joan and her daughter Kamala - a wonderful token of his confidence in me. Whether being his chauffeur, servant, student, cook, publisher, correspondent, secretary or companion, I learned the extent to which I could trust my own mind, and, though comparatively recently, to pay no attention to the attacks and blandishments of Mara. He helped me build unshakeable confidence in the Buddha-dharma, and taught me how to apply it to myself and to others, with compassion, in the midst of contemporary affairs. He has left a huge corpus of teachings redolent with insight that are now in course of publication as his Complete Works, as well as a large number of wonderful poems. He has left me with a host of personal recollections of him that I will reflect upon for the rest of my life. He has opened my eyes to the timeless beauty of the spiritual world, to the world of art and literature, and even to the lesser, fleeting beauty of the world of the ordinary senses. And last but by no means least, he enabled me to enjoy the company of countless numbers of friends near and far, young and old all over the world, as well as to cherish a small number of very close ones.

Urgyen Sangharakshita has helped me transform my breath, my blood, my flesh and my bones. He has taught me to listen to my own wise inner voice and to pay no attention to the stupid one. And now, whether in the midst of activity, with friends or in solitude, reflecting or meditating, I feel he is there encouraging me, protecting me and yes, even admonishing me should I for a moment fail to follow his precepts.

With love and profound gratitude to Bhante and to everyone else who has helped me transform my life in the direction of Enlightenment, and in whose company the bodhichitta has surely arisen.

Ashvajit

28th November 2018, 4 Bronhaul, Y Fan, Llanidloes, Powys, UK

bodhaniya — Thu, 29 Nov, 2018 - 16:52

Dear Ashvajit, thanks for publishing your personal tribute. Acknowledging my gratitude to you for example in friendship. The cycle continues. With love Bodhaniya

As well as having this online memorial space we would like to invite people from all around the world to contribute to a Book of Gratitude.

We will be collecting pages sent to us by post at Adhisthana, or sent orderoffice [at] triratnaorder.org (by email), or uploaded to this space to be printed out by us. These will then be collated and bound into book form and kept in the Sangharakshita library at Adhisthana.

Re. Languages:
I wondered if contributions need to be in English because ‘d like to encourage people from our Sangha in Germany to contribute. I received the following information from the order office:

Please send in any language. Of course, if the writer wants to add a rough English translation, that will mean that their message reaches more people, but as I see it, the more contributions the better.

claire70 — Fri, 2 Nov, 2018 - 16:55

If you are interested, I would be happy to do some translations from German into English.

vajrapriya — Tue, 6 Nov, 2018 - 11:55

Thanks Claire! If any come through I’ll forward them to you.

David Chávez — Wed, 31 Oct, 2018 - 23:01

Hello! Can it be handwritten notes or computer printed only? Thanks!

Mahamati — Thu, 1 Nov, 2018 - 07:47

Hello David, I am sure that hand-written will be fine if that is what you or anyone else would like to do. With metta, Mahamati

If you would like to express your gratitude for Bhante Urgyen Sangharakshita’s life you could give to a project which we know was very dear to Bhante’s heart and currently faces a funding crisis: the editing and publication of his Complete Works.

Bhante Sangharakshita’s wish was to see “a complete, uniform edition” of all his writings, published and unpublished.

Many people’s generous gifts for Bhante’s 90th birthday began to fulfil this wish with the...